Okay, thank you!

I have a suggestion, regarding sports, limited team position availability and stat points:

The situation
One thing I've noticed already, in my short time back, is a very limited number of positions available on active sports teams. This means long wait lists (which is fine, everyone has their turn when it's time), however the other aspect of that is: those on the wait lists are being left behind, stat-wise, while the active sports participants gain benefits.

It seems oddly one-sided, when a sports team can continue to gain stats through winning, but others not in sports - such as waiting for the opportunity for a team spot - get nothing. The gap between stat increases and stat maintaining members becomes evident after a year of competition.

After all, sports rolls can literally come down to a small handful of stat difference.

But what about those stuck waiting?

The suggestion
I suggest that, to alleviate some of the disproportionate stat gaining (by not being on an active team, due to limitations with team sizes or otherwise), that there be some kind of offset options for those not actively in a sport can pursue, for stats.

Something like sports training - such as a duelling prep session for the wait list, every other month (or in balanced accordance with the average active sport member gains)? Or wait list Quidditch members running plays for training prep? Or a broom racing trial/personal best training session?

Just something to stop that imbalance of sport teams getting incrementally stronger, leaving behind those waiting for a spot. Also, obviously, these events would be limited to wait list or non-active sport team members - that's the whole point.

It shouldn't allow current team members in sports to double dip.

The Pros
+ More of a balance in stat gains.
+ Opportunities for wait list members to actually do something, IC, that has some kind of benefit for their chosen interest (but who are otherwise limited by spot availability).
+ Less of a gap between those gaining and those not gaining

The Cons
- These events would require moderating
- Could be seen as unfair by those in sports (not sure why, but it might be)
- Would probably result in larger populated events (especially on some of those bigger teams, with extended replacements lists)
- Would require an average balance, to account for sportspeople not gaining stats as often as consistent winners

Conclusion
Currently there's an imbalance on stat gain. It needs to be remedied, as sadly it's not fair for one group of students to have their average stats increased, raising the performance bar, while an entire other group (who have no choice but to wait) are left behind, below that stat bar. After all, how can wait list students be expected to compete with multi-year sportspeople, after being on a wait list with no stat gains?

From what I can see, there is no real alternative to those waiting to improve and remain competitive, stat wise.

I also understand that winning accounts for stat gain, so that's why I mentioned a suggested average for these possible activities be reached - eg: someone who wins every match, is not the average, when others might win one out of several matches. Whether this means 1 event every other month, or every quarter, so long as there's something for wait listers to do and not be left behind (as much as they are).

Thanks for reading, I appreciate your time!

I have gotten the suggestion and I have copied it. I have placed the suggestion in full in the staff area. Link Back for staff. I can see some minor issues with this because many teams do not have an adequate wait list to do this, however I can see the point made and see what the team can come up with. Thank you.

Hello! I have several suggestions listed below:

1) Reformat the official index. I would suggest reorganise the official index by putting the format under each house into “last name (capitalised even?), first name” and in alphabetical order to make it easier to find a character and to make it look more “official”. I understand that it will be lots of work for our staffs seeing that we have quite a large amount of players already indexed now, but I believe it will be much easier when scanning the index page during moderated events to see if a player’s indexed or not.

2) Lengthen the duelling posting extension to 5 days. Both Quidditch and Broom Racing have 5 days for players to post until deadline, but duelling only has 4, and one more day does matter as no matter how it can cover one weekend day or at least a Friday night (like the mod’s up on Monday morning, and the deadline will be until Saturday morning so a Friday night is covered). I am aware that some players are more active during the weekdays, but similarly some are extremely busy in RL those days. So, I suggest lengthen the extension of duelling to 5 days/120 hours instead of 4 days/96 hours. I do understand the fact that a duel usually lasts more rounds and it actually requires less time to come up with a strategy since there are less players involved in a game, but I still want to bring this up since an extra day can really do a difference and nobody wants to have their planned action void.

3) Introduce the role of Quidditch Commentator. I think it will be fun if we can have the role of Quidditch Commentator on site like in the canon series. Instead of only having impartial descriptions in games, it will be quite interesting if a certain person (like the Quidditch captain who moderates the match or a selected student/professor) can act as a commentator after each mod. Apart from the descriptions done by the captains, the commentator can comment the game probably with their own IC preferences, which will add more fun to the game. However, there will be several notable issues popping up if this role is introduced: (1) if the quidditch captain moderating the match is acting as the commentator, this will add much more workload to them (2) if the mod is not taking up this role, there has to be a fair way of selecting the suitable commentator (3) if this role is introduced, then besides quidditch, should duelling and broom racing also have such roles? In addition, after reading what Aurelius has said in the previous suggestion, personally I think that if this role is introduced, the waitlisted members can try starting from the Commentator role when there are no vacant spots on house teams. Whether this will be a stat point gaining program or not can be discussed.

4) Add a thread recording all past staff members and their time of having the role. It will be great if there can be a staff roster listing all the staff members we have had on this site mostly for tracking purpose. For example, the list can look like: Charms Professor | name (year/month-year/month), name (year/month-year/month), name (year/month-present). The same applies to prefects/team captains. It will be really useful if we want to know exactly who taught us charms back in our previous years in case we have forgotten and more importantly this can record precious memories.

Thank you for taking your time reading the whole thing!

Lindsey Springhall wrote: 14 Feb 2022, 09:09

Hello! I have several suggestions listed below:

1) Reformat the official index. I would suggest reorganise the official index by putting the format under each house into “last name (capitalised even?), first name” and in alphabetical order to make it easier to find a character and to make it look more “official”. I understand that it will be lots of work for our staffs seeing that we have quite a large amount of players already indexed now, but I believe it will be much easier when scanning the index page during moderated events to see if a player’s indexed or not.

I will only answer these 2 points, as the sports teams and captains are the ones managing their own systems, making balance decisions, proposing changes etc.

We are a team of volunteers. Every single staff member and moderator on this site uses their free time to work on Hio. Index, especially, is a time-consuming task, as people have to be owled, owled again, there are discussions going on about whether certain backstories confirm to the site, and so on. You say that you understand that this is a lot of work, so I ask you to also understand that it would involve a lot of copy-and-pasting for something that can be achieved just as well by searching the page for a certain name. This would be a cosmetic feature first and foremost. Is it doable? Yes. Could an Index member do this in their free time if they wanted to? Absolutely. But I personally would feel bad asking them to sort the whole list when they have other tasks to do that they are required to do as members of the team.

4) Add a thread recording all past staff members and their time of having the role. It will be great if there can be a staff roster listing all the staff members we have had on this site mostly for tracking purpose. For example, the list can look like: Charms Professor | name (year/month-year/month), name (year/month-year/month), name (year/month-present). The same applies to prefects/team captains. It will be really useful if we want to know exactly who taught us charms back in our previous years in case we have forgotten and more importantly this can record precious memories.

We, as staff, have no list of who did which job when or until what time. I, personally, can remember most staff members (though not all of the earliest ones), but I don't remember exactly when they joined the team or left it. Gryffindor alone has gone through a handful of prefects in one of the prior years. In the past, there were overlaps of roles as well, and some roles have been discontinued (Deputy Headmaster, Head Prefect). This would need a consolation between IC and OOC that we aren't currently offering. Alone finding this information is something that would need hours of searching for data, and most likely wouldn't be completely successful, not to mention that some of the former staff left the site on bad terms or were made to leave. There are people whose accounts no longer exist or who wouldn't want to be immortalized this way (or which we might not want to immortalize that way).

Thank you for answering and I can totally understand

Some of our earliest profs no longer have accounts. Some also did not end their time on good terms. I am the only person likely old enough for some, but for instance Cloverfields Prof Vincent Swaftborn, flight Professor has no account. His time ended on good terms however. It was simply pruned. As for the months he had the role, it would take me hours to find the dates in truth.

I'm pretty sure this was suggested but we have a dark mode for posts? I'm sick of being blinded every time i enter a topic

Simon Corbin wrote: 16 Feb 2022, 18:08 I'm pretty sure this was suggested but we have a dark mode for posts? I'm sick of being blinded every time i enter a topic

Not sure if that would be a thing, 1. it would be a lot of work I imagine, and 2. A lot of people use colour in their posts and it would be a pain to check if your colours work on light and dark mode. Yellow haunts enough people in regular mode

I mean, obviously it isn't up to me, just my 2 pence

Hi! This idea just popped up in my head and I figured I might as well share it- Currently I feel like the possibilities in terms of interaction/participation with newspapers are rather limited if you are not an official member of the headliner team and don't start your own sort of unofficial paper. The daily prophet also seems to be completely of limits.
Not everyone has the time to commit fully like that, but perhaps would like for their character to get the opportunity to publish something.

So here is the deal: How about giving people the opportunity to submit articles to be published in a paper (this can be IC as well as OOC and solely voluntarily, not paid)? Perhaps this would even be worth opening another possibility to get a paid role as OOC editor for those articles and it would certainly give people a chance to participate some more with the newspaper system.
I don't know if that is possible to do, this is only a suggestion